12 Replies - 5447 Views - Last Post: 21 April 2010 - 08:09 AM

flash radio player advice

Posted 13 April 2010 - 12:51 PM

Hi,

I have been looking into internet radio over the last few weeks while trying to help a friend build a website. I originally posted on the web development forum page and got some good advice on there for playing a stream by embedding media player into the page. I have also spent time reading information about internet radio and different systems including shoutcast and RTSP etc.

The site that i am trying to build however is something along the lines of an internet radio station directory, a little like live365 but on a much smaller scale, with a certain amount of selected stations to choose from. I tried embedding media player into a page and when i tried out a particular radio station it worked fine with internet explorer but with Firefox on windows and on Linux the station did not play. This may be fixable with a Firefox plug-in, however when i passed the same URL to a flash player demo on stream24 website the station played fine on both IE and Firefox.

its partly down to this and other things that i have read that i am thinking a flash player would be the best solution for the site. However with little flash or action script experience (a couple of tutorials completed with flexSDK after starting to look into this project) i feel i would be better off (time is also a factor) using a pre existing player that i can customize the front end of and put into the site. I have come across one called JW player which seems to be aimed more at video but does mention http and rtsp audio in the features list.

I was wandering if anyone has any experience with this player or knows of any others that may suit this purpose that they could recommend. I would need to be able to use this on a commercial site and purchasing one is not a problem, but i would need to be able to change the look of the player. My other concern is that i have read about problems with some flash players and radio streams filling users memory up or skipping every few minutes, which is why i would like to look at something that comes recommended.

Re: flash radio player advice

Posted 20 April 2010 - 11:35 AM

I have been chipping away at a "one player that fits all" off and on for years meeting various degrees of success and falling victim to flash player, platform and browser changes. Part of this is because I also need to need to handle meta data for now playing and I want gateway video ad insertion. IE and FireFox and SAFARI etc., as many of us know, are not equal in how they behave. CSS and JS are perfect examples of this. In the case of FF sometimes it just doesn't expose data via JS at all. But the adventure has been a great learning experience. I would be glad to PM with you some of the things I have experienced.

Since you are on target for a commercial project, I would recommend finding an off-the-shelf player like JW or one of the commercial grade apps from the guy that makes Whimpy, you might save yourself a ton of dev time and a lot of headaches. But you will still likely run into cross-browser and cross platform issues. At least to get you started.

Also use that view source button and look at what some of the big streaming providers are doing, like Liquid Compass or Stream the World, CBS, MSN, YAHOO, L365 etc. Check out Radio Time and I think it's called Penguin Radio.

If you leave the domain of MP3 and start trying to work across platforms like WM Encoder, Flash Media, OGG, SilverLight, RealMedia, QuickTime... You introduce even more variables. So I would pick one format and learn it well.

I myself am stubborn and will continue to chase the golden ring. Lately, for my needs, have started looking at converting to a true flash streaming solution. You condense your compatibility issues to a smaller foot-print and have much more control.

Cheers

Edit: I should add the the current solution I am working with uses the swf to control mplayer or quicktime via JS. This works well, with IE, FF and Safari on PC and Safari, FF and Camino on MAC. And I can use live WME or Shoutcast streams for the audio source. The problem I have on the PC in FF is not exposing status changes and meta data. So I haven't touched the mac implementation yet. And acutally I haven't touched the code in a few weeks.

Re: flash radio player advice

Posted 21 April 2010 - 05:47 AM

Hi booleanops

Thank you for your reply, i was trying to send you a PM but there seems to be a problem with this on my account, i have not tried to PM from here before so not sure what the problem is. I have contacted admin so hopefully this will be resolved soon. You mentioned in your message that you would be happy to PM me some of your experiences, That would be a great help thank you, as soon as my PM problem is resolved i will send you the message i wrote about what i have tried so far.

Re: flash radio player advice

Posted 21 April 2010 - 07:49 AM

LOL... yes, I actually ran into the same issue when I became a member. I think there should be a big line of red text after you join that specifies this limitation, but nonetheless, I probably wouldn't have read it lol.

Re: flash radio player advice

Posted 21 April 2010 - 08:07 AM

LOL i would have probably missed it as well, at least i now know i was not overlooking something obvious in the settings panel

just checked and i have access now to the PM system, however i can not send the message to anyone with under 10 posts. I have enabled my email address in my profile however this is just for an email form, if you were happy to enable that feature on you profile i could send this message via that or i could just post on to this thread.

easier still i just added my email address to my interests field, let me know when you have it and ill change the information.